


Brothers

by Squeegee



Category: Marvel (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squeegee/pseuds/Squeegee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Loki and Thor start spending too much time together, things are not always what they seem.  Their mother is angry with them, Thor's friends won't talk to them, and Loki is left wondering why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elsian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsian/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [兄弟/Brothers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/606315) by [Aleera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleera/pseuds/Aleera)



> Yes, that summary sucks. Moving on...
> 
> Secret Santa gift for the lovely Elsian. Merry Christmas!  
> I hope this is acceptable.

Loki’s room was all sharp corners and steel ornaments. Dark colors. Cold walls. There was a bed, of course – a down mattress with a single pillow and one blanket. It was so different from his brother’s room.

Thor had pillows piled almost to the ceiling, a large bed with five or ten blankets of different sizes, cushioned chairs, couches. Where Loki piled books, Thor piled more pillows, animal pelts, extra blankets, until his floor was a sea of lush fur and cushions. Where Loki was organized, Thor was messy. Between excursions with his friends and sheer laziness, Thor had trashed his room.

And as much as Loki hated to admit it, he loved sitting here, on the floor, curled up in the pillows and pelts and blankets, the golds and reds and yellows as he stared up at his brother’s bed and his wide, open windows. The sunlight was too hot, but it was comfortable all the same. Thor loved the sun, loved the warmth, and Loki seemed to be more and more willing to accept that over the cold steel of his own chambers.

Eventually there would be a time when Loki had to accept that he was growing up. Eventually Loki would actually have to hate his brother instead of just misplacing his boots and turning his swords into ribbon and shouting at him whenever they got into a fight. Eventually he would have to stop visiting Thor’s room.

But today was not that day.

Today, Loki was still Thor’s little brother, and today Loki was content to pull the red and gold and silver pelts over his shoulders and close his eyes. Today, Loki was content to fall asleep listening to the sounds of the world from his brother’s open window.

\--

“Must you always sleep? ‘Tis nearly midday.”

Loki moaned and pulled his head under the pelt he was using as a blanket, whining when his brother prodded him again in the shoulder, harder. He rarely ever slept in, but yesterday had been long and exhausting. He was justified in sleeping past noon.

“Have you forgotten the day already?”

No. He hadn’t. Today was the celebration after what had been a horrific weekend. Today was a day to themselves to adventure and play and explore. They were traveling to Alfheim today, further than they had ever gone even in the company of their friends and their father. They were going to the forest to escape and relax and get away from the sharp stares and forlorn gazes of the Asier.

No, Loki had not forgotten today. He was looking forward to it. But that didn’t make rousing from his sleep any less exhausting.

Tufts of tangled black hair emerged from Loki’s makeshift mattress on the floor of Thor’s bedroom. Squinted green eyes and pursed, angry lips followed. He looked up at Thor, and when he saw how eager his brother looked the anger faded like fog in the mid-morning sun. His lips curled into a smirk, and Loki meandered out from under the animal pelts and silk blankets and excessive amounts of pillows to stand beside his brother.

“Does father know?” Loki’s voice was sleepy and raspy, and he let out a reluctant yawn.

“No.” Thor sounded like he had been awake for days.

“Sif? Fandral?”

“No. No, just us.”

“Perfect.”

Their grins matched as Loki glided to the window and looked out over their city. Below them were streets and markets. Golden roads and bridges weaved a lattice underneath him, and on the roads below tiny carriages made their way to and from stalls, loading up with vegetables and meats and potatoes for the coming week. Beyond all that was the bifrost in the distance, and the road shone so bright that it was almost blinding.

It seemed brighter today.

As Loki turned around the black silk that was his sleepwear transformed around him. Elegant gold and black armor formed to replace the loose-fitting pajamas. Green pants replaced black. Daggers came into existence. Belts and straps and chains littered his waist and his legs. It was adventure attire, sleek and functional, and though Thor was usually wont to make fun of his ridiculous clothing, today he only smiled.

Loki smiled back.

And together they raced to the stables.

\--

Their trip to Alfheim created more problems than it solved.

Loki told his mother of their adventure, and at the mention of Thor helping him start a fire their mother wept. Guards stared at them as they passed through the gates. Asier stared as they wandered through the market to pick out fruit for their dinner. Thor’s friends lost interest in them within days.

Thor was not concerned, and was convinced that all his friends and their mother needed was time to adjust. Everyone else would follow suit. It was just the way things were.

Loki prayed that this was true.

After Alfheim, they spent more time alone. They holed up in Thor’s room, or they escaped to other realms. It had been weeks since Thor had invited their friends with them, but when Loki asked Thor replied that they were not ready.

Loki did not object.

He liked being alone with his brother.

He liked going out, adventuring beyond their realm into places unknown. He liked watching Thor hunt for their dinner, and he liked building fires under the tall, lofty trees of Alfheim and watching the red fire and black smoke mix with the purple leaves above their heads.

It was their fourth trip to Alfheim, and their adventure had almost become a routine. They would explore all day, hunt, build a fire, make camp. After they ate, they would toss the scraps of their food out beyond their camp. Thor would sit under a tree, and Loki would join him.

There was always a knot in his chest as Loki sat down next to his brother, and he always felt cold.

Loki would rest his head on Thor’s shoulder, and Thor would wrap his arm around his too-thin waist.

“You need to eat more,” he would say, and Loki would always nod and close his eyes.

Loki would always fall asleep like that, under the tall, spiral branches and glowing purple leaves of the foreign trees, wrapped safely in his brother’s arms, but not without difficulty. He was always worried, always thinking, always wondering.

Something was wrong, and it was something he couldn’t quite remember. It was why his mother was crying, why Thor avoided his friends, why guards glared at them when they walked through the halls and merchants shook their heads when they paid for fruits.

But then Loki would feel his brother’s foot twitch next to him and hear him snoring in his ear. He would smile and say it didn’t matter, and slowly Loki would drift off to sleep.

\--

“Do you miss them?”

“Who?”

“Your friends... Sif. She fancies you. You know she does.”

Loki rolled over on his side, grass sticking up in his face as he picked himself up off the hill and propped himself up on his elbow. For the first time in too long his feet were bare and his armor was gone. In its place was a simple green tunic and brown pants. They were Thor’s, and they fit terribly, but nobody on Midgard knew them, and nobody on Midgard was here to bear witness.

Loki’s boots were scattered with Thor’s somewhere down the hill.

He would get them later.

A gust of wind rushed up the side of the hill, and the grass bet to it. Thor’s hair shone bright as gold in the sunlight.

“Sif will find another, I am sure. And my friends are yours, too.”

“Then my friends only tolerate me.” Loki scoffed. “You see how they view me, Thor. Without you they would have no patience for me.” The only one to ever voluntarily include him had been his brother. Surely Thor knew that by now.

“You do not like them, then?”

“They do not like me.” With absent hands, Loki plucked a blade of grass and blew. The blade grew thick and long and black before Loki released the new garter snake onto the earthen terrain.

“Then I suppose they are no friends of mine, either.” Thor frowned and laid back on the earth.

Loki plucked the garter snake from the grass and flung it down the hill.

\--

The next day it rained.

It did not stop.

For three days, Loki sat with Thor in his room and watched the lightning.

“What if it hits us?” Loki frowned, too old to be afraid of storms and too young to teach himself different.

“It won’t.” Thor smiled.

“How do you know?”

“Look.”

They were sitting on Thor’s bed. Thor sprawled out on his back, and Loki sat up on his knees, staring out the window that resided just above his brother’s mattress. With his elbows resting on the windowsill, Loki poked his head out into the sky, just far enough back to stay under the protection of the stone brick above. Beneath him, Asier walked around like ants on pencil-thin roads. Above him, lightning raced between clouds, and stone shook from the cracks of thunder.

The patter of rain was soothing, but the storm made him nervous and scared.

In Loki’s time staring out the window, Thor had risen from the bed and sneaked up behind him. He had wrapped his arms around his waist and rested his chin on his shoulders. “What do you see?” he asked, and Loki instinctively leaned back against his chest.

“Rain.”

“And?”

“People. Horses. Lightning.”

“Right.”

Loki glanced back at his brother, brows knit tightly in confusion. “Yes.”

“Brother, what comes after lightning?”

“Thunder.”

“And who controls the thunder?”

It took him a moment before Loki finally smiled and rested his arms back on the windowsill. Thor moved forward with him, and together the two of them watched it rain until the sky fell black.

\--

Two days later, Loki was sick.

Thor insisted that he stay in bed.

Rain still fell in sheets, pelting the streets and Asier and horses with relentless force, and so Thor closed the window to the sound of thunder. Every time Loki tried to stand, his brother would be at his side, pushing him back down by the shoulders and covering him back up with blankets. Loki would cough, and Thor would frown, stroking his hair and whispering that he needed to rest.

Loki would scoff, but the energy to tell his brother to leave would always escape him, and he was okay with that. He was hot. He was sweating and hot and miserable. His black, usually straight hair was scraggly and matted to his forehead, to the pillow, to his ear, and his back was shaking from his short, raspy breaths. Thor’s hand was cool on his forehead and his cheek and his chest, and Loki was not yet selfless enough to give that away.

He needed Thor. He needed him here.

Their father stayed away, and the only time their mother came into Thor’s room she was distraught. Why did Loki insist on staying here, she would ask, and Thor would look up at her and frown. Loki would cough. And she would flee.

Thor was all he had.

At every meal, Thor brought him his food, helped him up in bed, helped him eat and drink and then helped him lie down again. Large, gentle hands would pull the sheets up over his shoulders before disappearing to relieve Loki of his dishes. They returned seconds later, petting his hair and rubbing his chest and comforting him until he fell into a restless sleep.

\--

In his dreams, his brother was dead and slain by sickness and valor. They were always in Jotunheim. The biting cold enveloped them and froze them down to their bones until they could barely move. The snow and ice was so thick they had to struggle to see each other.

In his dreams, Thor lay dying in the frozen wastes of a realm beyond the sun, and Loki always found him too late. He would run to him. He would kneel down. He would take his brother in his arms and cradle him like an infant. And he would cry. Thor’s hair was blue and covered with snow and ice and blood. His armor was always cracked and flaked with red, and his cape was always faded and torn.

“Thor?” he would plea, but he never got a response. His brother was gone.

Then he would wake.

Thor never felt real after those dreams. Yet there he was, scooping Loki up in his arms, hugging him, rocking him, his mouth always pressed to Loki’s ear as he murmured every comforting word he knew. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re alright.”

Loki would cling to Thor’s silk pajamas and close his eyes. He never slept after that, and Thor never stopped holding him.

\--

Loki felt better as soon as the rain cleared.

As soon as the rain cleared, Thor said they were ready.

Loki sat up in bed and changed into his clothes, Thor’s clothes, the baggy tunic and pants that he had worn ever since their excursion to Midgard. He wanted to ask Thor what he meant. Who was “they” and why were they ready, but Thor disappeared out of his chambers before Loki got a chance to ask.

When the door opened again, it was not Thor that greeted him. Instead, it was four young warriors.

Loki furrowed his brows. Thor’s friends were taller than he last remembered. Volstagg had grown rounder, and Fandral now sported a beard. Sif’s braid went down to nearly the middle of her back, and Hogun looked… angrier.

They all had new armor fitted exquisitely to their new forms, and none of them gave Loki a chance to speak before they stepped forward.

“You need to come with us, my friend.” Fandral spoke first, holding his hand out for Loki to grasp.

Loki did not move. “I need to wait for Thor.”

“Don’t worry.” There was something sad in Fandral’s voice, and that made Loki worry. “Thor is waiting for you.”

\--

They led him out of Thor’s chambers and locked the door behind them. They led him outside, past merchants and horses and potatoes. They led him past the city, under a grey and overcast sky until the road stopped, and then they walked further.

Loki’s boots soiled as he stepped onto mud still soggy from weeks of rain, and his mood soured even more. On either side of him were family crypts ranging from small, stone tombs to massive golden structures. Each building represented an entire family’s deceased, and as he looked back he remembered how he and Thor had debated on how far down the crypts went.

Thor rationalized that they probably stopped after a point, but Loki had convinced him otherwise. “No, the stairs keep going,” he’d said. “They keep going and going until suddenly you’re burying your family with your blood and sweat in the fiery pits of Hel.”

Thor had had nightmares that night.

It was the only time he ever slept in Loki’s bed.

As they got further and further back the mausoleums got bigger and bolder, gold and silver plated, trimmed with precious metals and extravagant architecture.

The bottoms of Loki’s trousers were soggy and wet with mud. “What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see.”

With Vostagg and Hogun flanking him on either side, Fandral walked behind him with a hand on his shoulder. Sif lead the way through the maze of the dead like she’d been here a thousand times, and Loki wondered who she had known so far back in this mass of graves.

When they reached the back of the cemetery, when they were standing on the steps of his family’s crypt, Loki suddenly knew.

He knew, but he didn’t want to accept.

Loki’s feet moved automatically as they passed through giant golden pillar and open doors ten feet tall. Sif and Volstagg lit torches. Fandral’s hand was still on his shoulder.

They weaved through dark halls and vaulted ceilings, past millennia-old statues until they got to the back of the crypt.

This statue was wrong.

Thor’s eyes were too small, and his ears were too big. His hair was too long, and he never looked so solemn and disinterested in anything. His bracers were too thin, and his armor fit him wrong.

The statue looked smaller and weaker than the Thor Loki had seen this morning.

“Your mother wanted us to bring you here.” Fandral had taken his hand off of Loki, but he was the only one that hadn’t stepped back to keep his distance.

Loki wanted to punch him.

“She said it was time you remembered.”

\--

The next day they were going to war.

Neither of them could sleep.

Instead, they sat on the bifrost, battle armor clinking restlessly against the bridge as they let their feet dangle out over the abyss. Occasionally their feet bumped into each other and the two of them gave a wary, knowing smile.

“When we get back, brother, we’re going to Alfheim.” Thor grinned as he leaned back on his hands and looked up into the cosmos, counting the stars and staring into the universe. “When this war is won, we will celebrate with father and Sif and Fandral… And then when they are all drunk and merry from meat and mead, we will grab our horses and ride.”

Loki smiled, and this time it was genuine. “I think I’ll have quite enough elves on the morrow, Thor. I can’t see myself wanting more.”

Thor chuckled and threw his arm around Loki’s shoulders. His metal bracers clinked and scratched against Loki’s own armor, but his touch still felt warm and comforting. “There are different elves in Alfheim, brother. Peaceful elves. And I doubt we shall see any of them. Father says the forests are vast and the people are scarce, not so bold and angry as the dark elves.” Again, he smiled. “I mean not to converse with others. I mean to escape. I mean to see trees taller than giants and rivers that flow gold, and I mean to share it with you.”

“And why me?” Loki’s smile waned, hands gripping the edge of the bridge so hard he feared he would break it. He usually had better control over his emotions, but tonight he was scared. Tomorrow, their world was going to change. “Why me and not Sif? Why not the goddess you fawn over every night to me before you sleep?”

Thor squeezed his shoulder. “Sif is not my brother.”

\--

Thor died on the battlefield with a spear sticking through his chest.

Loki reached him too late.

\--

It had been hours since Sif and the Warriors Three had left him, and Loki’s eyes had long since adjusted to the dark.

The mighty Mjolnir had been placed atop Thor’s sarcophagus, and Loki’s fingers traced it idly as he stared into eyes that were way too serious to have belonged to his brother.

He hadn’t cried when he found Thor. He hadn’t cried when they buried him. He hadn’t cried because before they had gone off to battle, Thor promised he would always be there with him. Thor had promised to stay by his side.

So Loki had made him stay.

Somewhere overhead thunder growled, and this time Thor did not come to save him.

\--

“Women will come and go, Loki, but I will only have one brother, and no one in the Nine Realms could be more important.”


End file.
